TRAILERS OF MAIL UNOPENED AT IRS
If you paid your income tax on time this year, but recently received a notice from the IRS that you didn’t, you’re not alone.
There are trailers full of unopened mail set up outside Internal Revenue Service facilities. Millions of pieces of mail began to pile up this spring when IRS offices were closed due to the pandemic. Since returning to those offices, workers have been unable to catch up as more correspondence arrived during tax season. Despite that fact, the IRS this month began sending out notices of delinquent taxes. To compound the problem, taxpayers are unable to speak with anyone at the IRS due to the high volume of calls they are receiving. Instead, local accountants have been flooded with calls from concerned clients who paid their taxes on time, and are asking what to do.
The IRS has recently posted new information on their website saying that payments will be posted as of the date received, not the date when the IRS finally gets around to processing them. The notice says “If a taxpayer mailed a check, it may still be unopened in the backlog of mail the IRS is processing due to COVID-19.” To avoid penalties and interest, taxpayers are urged to not cancel their checks, and to make sure funds are available when the IRS processes them. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, has asked the IRS to stop mailing notices for unpaid taxes until the backlog of mail is cleared.
I filled electronically thank GOD! I received an email when they accepted it, another when they told me that I was receiving a refund. Haven’t got it, not sure I will get it this year. But I rather be waiting on them, than them waiting on me. As far as the truck loads of mail, they should have known that this was going to happen. Some kind of arrangement could have been put in place to handle the truck loads of mail that they knew would be waiting for them when they returned from their vacation! They can send me a letter if they want, I have proof that I filed before the timeframe for filing ran out!
This is unbelievable. You let a taxpayer be thirty second late with something the IRS wants and you risk huge fines and in some cases criminal prosecution, but the IRS is allowed to hold literal trailer loads of unopened mail while wrongly accusing citizens of not paying their taxes. Someone should be held accountable for this. Why is Congress not doing their job and demanding answers to this? I am sick of their political games, they are spending so much time going after each other that they are failing to effectively govern.